Blur (Blur Trilogy)

by Steven James

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, it’s like flakes of paint breaking off when I rub my hand against what appears to be real, and I end up rubbing one layer of reality away.”

  “Did you just say ‘flakes of pain’?”

  “Paint.”

  “Gotcha.”

  Daniel thought back to the headaches he’d been having.

  Flakes of pain.

  That might not be such a bad description after all.

  “You seem to be coming up with all sorts of wild images—flakes of reality rubbing off, vultures picking away at the corpse of your dreams. Where do you think all this is coming from?”

  “I honestly don’t know.”

  “It’s like a part of your brain that’s never really been active is waking up.”

  Maybe that’s why you’re seeing things, sleepwalking, all of that.

  Maybe that has something to do with the headaches.

  “That’s possible.”

  But why?

  And why now?

  Kyle asked, “So how did the meeting with Ronnie go yesterday?”

  “Okay. He told me Emily’s cell phone was never found.”

  “By your tone of voice I can tell you’re thinking that’s suspicious.”

  “He said she normally carried it in her pocket, not her purse. I doubt the current would have been able to snatch a cell phone from her pocket.”

  And based on the location of the broken glasses, it doesn’t look like she fell off the cliff anyway, he thought, but didn’t bring that up.

  “I wonder,” Kyle reflected, “who the last person was who she talked to or texted?”

  “No kidding. If she was killed, it might tell us who she was with out at the lake.”

  As the conversation paused, Daniel decided it was time to get to the reason he’d called.

  “Kyle, did you know that Emily had a crush on you?”

  “What are you talking about? Ronnie told you that?”

  “No. I saw her notebook while I was at their house. She wrote your name over and over in it. Drew hearts next to it, you know, like girls do.”

  Silence. “I had no idea it was that serious.”

  “So you knew?”

  “I mean, I’d heard she liked me, but I’m with Mia. Besides, Emily was a freshman and it wasn’t like I would’ve asked her out.”

  Those were the same things Daniel had thought of earlier. “But you told me you didn’t know her.”

  “Yeah, no, I mean, I said hi to her a few times in the hall. That’s all. Her locker was just down from mine. I was just trying to be polite.” He paused. “She must have gotten the wrong idea.”

  “She must have. I think Ty might have seen the notebook.”

  “That’s why he brought it up with you on Saturday?”

  “Yeah, and also why he said that he knew about you and Emily—back when we first met up with Ronnie when they were bullying him.”

  “So you really think someone might’ve killed Emily?”

  “Yes.”

  Kyle reflected for a moment. “You think it might have been Ty?”

  So far Daniel had simply been entertaining the possibility that Emily had been killed. He hadn’t thought of anyone in particular doing it. “I don’t know.”

  “It would explain how he knew what was in her notebook.”

  “There could be a lot of explanations for that.”

  “Maybe.”

  “My dad doesn’t want me looking into her death anymore. He thinks I’m snooping around. He wants me to leave it all to him.”

  “So what did you tell him?”

  “I promised I wouldn’t keep investigating things.”

  “Aha. So no trip to the cemetery?”

  “Well, we’ll see. I’ve started seeing and doing really scary things—digging up Akira is just the latest one. I need to find some answers, and I need to find them fast before I go off the deep end and do something dangerous or that I would really regret.”

  “And you think solving this will do that?”

  “I sure hope so.”

  “Well, I’ll help in any way I can, but for now, if she really was murdered, it could have been just about anybody. I don’t think you should trust—”

  “Please don’t tell me not to trust anyone,” Daniel said.

  “Why not?”

  “In the movies, it’s always the guy who warns the main character not to trust anyone who turns out betraying him in the end.”

  For a moment Kyle didn’t reply. “Okay. The last thing I’d want is for you to get suspicious of me.”

  “Or you of me.”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, man.”

  “I’ll see you then.”

  Flakes of pain.

  Really, not such a bad image.

  Daniel turned to the journal and wrote down the impressions about the flakes of reality, then went on:

  The boy was not always this way, not always slipping into grayland.

  He could remember the way it used to be. That was the hardest part—knowing that once he hadn’t been losing his grip on reality. Back then he used to think he was normal, well, as normal as normal is.

  But now things were different. He’d moved from the world of ordinary to the fringes of insanity.

  All in a matter of days.

  How much does it take to push you over the edge? There’s always a tipping point, like with an avalanche—always that seemingly inconsequential matter of a few snowflakes that makes all the difference.

  And then, once the avalanche starts, there’s no holding it back.

  Daniel couldn’t help but wonder if one of these visions would do that, push him over the edge in a way that he wouldn’t be able to recover from.

  Once you slip into madness, can you ever climb out of it again?

  Grayland.

  Caught between black and white.

  Between good and evil.

  Now there was a scary thought.

  He surfed the Web for info about daymares and nightmares and found that normal people typically have a few disturbing nightmares a year. Artistic and extraordinarily creative people—painters, sculptors, composers, novelists—might have several of them a month.

  Schizophrenics might have several vivid, disturbing dreams every week.

  Some while they’re awake.

  It seemed that the barrier between reality and fantasy was thicker for some people than for others. And for him, it was becoming thinner and thinner.

  Or maybe it wasn’t even there at all anymore.

  With that on his mind, he went to take the garbage to the curb and found the front door locked and dead-bolted shut.

  Dad did that to keep you in. So if you sleepwalk you won’t get outside.

  Of course, it would have been possible for someone who was sleepwalking to unlock a door just as easily as it might have been for him to open it. Still, as far as Daniel knew, his dad never dead-bolted that door, and the fact that he had done so tonight just confirmed how concerned he was.

  Back inside the house, after taking care of the trash, Daniel tried texting Stacy.

  No reply.

  His mattress was still damp from last night, so he pulled out his sleeping bag again.

  Before climbing in, he took a moment to slide his dresser in front of his door. He didn’t know if it would help, but just in case he did try to leave during the night to look for Akira’s corpse, it might slow him down.

  CHAPTER

  FORTY-TWO

  No problems with sleepwalking last night.

  Thankfully.

  At school, Kyle asked him again to introduce him to Stacy, and Daniel promised that he would, even though it was going to be an awkward conversation because she’d stood him
up on Saturday night.

  “Remember how we were talking about visiting the cemetery?” Kyle asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “I think we should go after your football practice this afternoon. I work for a few hours at Rizzo’s after school, but I get off at six.”

  “In the middle of the supper rush?”

  “He has someone else coming in.”

  “You really think we’ll find something at the graveyard?”

  Kyle shrugged. “Who knows. Maybe it’ll bring you some of those answers you’ve been looking for.”

  Daniel remembered that St. Andrew’s Cemetery was listed in the bulletin from Emily’s funeral as the place where they were going to hold the graveside service.

  “And,” Kyle suggested, “maybe it’ll help you not to sleepwalk if you go out there. You know, if thinking about going to the graveyard caused you to do that the other night with Akira.”

  They agreed to meet at St. Andrew’s at six thirty.

  After third hour, Daniel checked his texts and saw one from his dad. He’d been able to set up an appointment with the psychiatrist next Wednesday at four o’clock. “I’ll talk to your coach if you want me to, get you cleared to miss practice,” he wrote.

  Daniel had missed football practice last night, and the prospect of missing another one next week was not thrilling.

  “What about tmrw?” he texted his dad back. “No school.”

  “Tried that. This is the earliest he can get you in.”

  “I’ll tell Coach myself,” Daniel typed.

  He met up with Nicole after fourth hour and returned her earring. They spoke for a few moments about Saturday night. She thanked him for finding the earring, and after she left for class he checked his phone. Still no texts from Stacy. He hadn’t seen her all day. Maybe she was sick. Or maybe she was purposely avoiding him.

  He had the inclination to search the halls for her some more, but in the end he decided that he’d looked for her, texted her, called her enough. If she wanted to talk to him, she had his number. At this point it was up to her.

  The rest of the afternoon and football practice went by in a refreshingly normal way. It was good to have things not slide any further through the barrier between fantasy and reality.

  After practice, Daniel told Coach Warner that he was going to miss practice next Wednesday because he had to see a doctor.

  “You went to a doctor yesterday,” Coach said ambiguously.

  “This is . . .” Daniel didn’t want to get into trying to explain why he had to see a shrink. “Well, it’s sort of a follow-up.”

  “Anything I should be concerned about?”

  “No. I’m good to play this week. Don’t worry.”

  “Keep me posted.”

  “I will.”

  On the way to the graveyard to meet Kyle, he got a call from the Ohio State recruiter who’d been at the game Friday night. He asked Daniel how he was; he told him he was fine, thanked the guy for following up, and they set up a time next week to connect again.

  The road leading into St. Andrew’s Cemetery hadn’t been maintained well and morphed from pavement to gravel almost as soon as it left the county highway and entered the cemetery grounds.

  When he arrived, he saw Kyle waiting for him with both Nicole and Mia beside him.

  CHAPTER

  FORTY-THREE

  When they greeted each other Daniel found out Kyle had asked Mia to come and she’d asked Nicole.

  “Reminds me of girls always heading off to the bathroom together,” Kyle observed. “I mean, can you imagine a guy being like, ‘Dude, I gotta pee. Wanna come along?’ ”

  “Ew, that would definitely be wrong,” Mia agreed. “But it’s a different deal for girls, right, Nicole?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Still, it seemed a little uncharacteristic for Mia to have invited her, and Daniel figured it might’ve just been because he was going to be there.

  All four of them had been at this cemetery before, for a school project back in eighth grade.

  They’d had to do grave rubbings, holding a piece of paper against a gravestone and then using a charcoal pencil to rub against the paper to transfer the indentations of the dead person’s name and their dates of birth and death onto it.

  It was sort of a macabre assignment, and some of the kids really freaked out about it.

  Daniel had rubbed the stone of someone who’d died in 1924. It was a baby boy who’d lived only seven days.

  Emily Jackson had lived 5,250 days longer than that baby.

  Now, counting back, Daniel realized he’d lived 6,103 days longer.

  Numbers.

  He just couldn’t help but notice the numbers.

  Yeah, Miss Flynn was right when she’d commented about Kyle’s blog entry last week, the one about time sliding down the slopes of his days. “The sand tumbles down quickly for us all,” she’d told the class.

  Grain by grain.

  Moment by moment.

  Slipping away.

  “Do you know where Emily’s grave is?” Mia’s question to the group drew Daniel out of his thoughts.

  “No,” Kyle answered. “I say we spread out to look for it. Pairs. Mia, you’re with me.”

  “You good with that?” Daniel asked Nicole.

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  “The grave will be fresh,” Mia noted grimly. “It’s just a week old.”

  The same as that baby’s entire life.

  Man, that was a lot to process.

  The graveyard was sprawling and hilly, so Daniel figured it might take a little searching to find where Emily was buried. The pines that grew throughout the grounds were going to make it even harder to find the grave.

  Twilight.

  The sun was low and the shadows long.

  Which seemed appropriate for being in a graveyard.

  As they searched, Daniel got to talking with Nicole. He didn’t tell her about the disturbing visions he’d been having, but he did share that he and Kyle were starting to have their suspicions that Emily had been killed. “Her brother, Ronnie, told us she knew how to swim.”

  “Before you drove up, Kyle said you two wanted to come out here to see what stuff might have been left on her grave,” Nicole said quietly. “Maybe by someone who’d been with her when she died.”

  The way she phrased that struck him: Been with her when she died. Not, Killed her.

  “Yes.”

  “That’s sort of creepy.”

  “I’m with you there.”

  “You really think we’ll find anything?”

  Earlier, when Kyle had suggested coming here, the idea had made sense to Daniel, but now as he thought more about it, he wondered if the odds were really in their favor after all.

  Probably not.

  “I really don’t know.”

  When he brought up Emily’s notebook and confided in Nicole that Kyle’s name had been written in the margins, she told him she’d heard that a freshman girl had a crush on Kyle, but hadn’t known who it was. “Jessica Tray’s sister saw Emily drawing hearts in her notebook one time. Must have been for him.”

  They walked over a small rise and found the grave.

  Emily’s name and the dates of her birth and death were on a temporary marker, as well as the inscription, “Born to Be Loved.” They must have still been engraving the actual granite gravestone.

  Seeing the grave, Daniel thought again of Ronnie’s mom and how strangely she’d acted when he was at their house.

  She gave birth to this girl.

  And then had to bury her.

  It was impossible to imagine how hard that must have been, and despite how tersely the woman had spoken to him, his heart went out to her.

  Lying beside the grave marker were several bouquets of flower
s, drooping and wind-whipped from the storms that had savaged the area over the last week.

  The flowers made Daniel recall seeing the comments on Emily’s Facebook page, and how he’d thought of that as the twenty-first-century way of remembering someone.

  Apparently, both ways were still around.

  And that was okay.

  Somebody had stuck a small pinwheel in the ground, but it was motionless in the still dusk. Beside it were a few framed smiling photos of Emily with Mr. Ackerman’s photography studio logo in the lower left-hand corner. They were in plastic bags to protect them from the weather, but Daniel saw the necklace draped around her neck in each of them. A couple of stuffed animals had been left by the gravestone and were damp and mud-splattered from the rain the other night.

  For a moment neither he nor Nicole spoke. Finally, they called Kyle and Mia over to join them.

  Together, the four of them stood mutely around Emily’s grave.

  “Hang on a minute,” Mia said. “Those flowers—I saw some just like ’em over by this other grave.”

  She led them across the cemetery.

  Lying on a grave near the road, resting tranquilly beside the gravestone, was a bouquet of flowers identical to one of those that was on Emily’s grave.

  The name on the gravestone: Grace McKinney.

  Mr. McKinney the freshman math teacher’s wife.

  She’d died two summers ago.

  The inscription read: “Beloved wife, taken too soon.”

  “That’s a little bizarre, don’t you think?” Mia said. “That these flowers are fresh, just like the ones on Emily’s grave.”

  “I don’t know,” replied Kyle. “Mr. McKinney probably came out here to put flowers on Emily’s grave and just brought some for his wife’s grave as well. Or vice versa.”

  “Emily had him for a teacher,” Daniel reminded them. “There’s nothing too weird about him leaving flowers on her grave.”

  No one had brought up how Grace McKinney died, but now Daniel did. “She didn’t just die. Remember? She drowned.”

  Nicole stared at the gravestone. “Yeah. In their swimming pool, wasn’t it? Dove in, hit her head on the bottom?”

  “Yes,” Mia replied. “At least, that’s what they said.”